"La Pietra, St. Francis still share lead."

"Tiny La Pietra scores big victory to go 9-0."

Those headlines from the sports section in the last three weeks include school names not usually seen in the sports section of a metropolitan daily paper.

Welcome to high school Division II sports.

Three years ago, the Hawai'i High School Athletic Association executive board added a Division II state football tournament to the sports calendar in an effort to provide more opportunity for smaller schools.

Two years ago, the association moved ahead with increasing Division II girls basketball and softball. And Division II volleyball tournaments were added last fall.

High school Division II sports do not typically get much coverage in daily papers. In the daily mix of prep and college sports, pro sports and ocean sports, it can be difficult for small-school programs to get much attention.

The size of the fan base and overall interest in a particular sport are among the factors we consider in determining how much coverage a game or a sport gets. Smaller schools inherently have a smaller fan base.

But as leagues here have worked to provide more opportunities for smaller schools, we, too, have added to Division II coverage.

So as tournaments have been added, we have covered them. And we provide game statistics and summaries for them as we do for Division I tournaments.

Adding coverage of another level of teams can be a challenge in terms of news space, staff and deadlines.

We rely on schools to provide scores and game stats for games we do not staff. On game nights, sports clerks and copy editors work at a feverish pace to get stats, as they are called, faxed or e-mailed to us. It's a lot of information that comes in a small window of time and must be turned around and put into box scores and summaries. If games run late or the person who needs to get the information to us gets sidetracked, stats may not get to us in time for our deadlines.

But on the plus side, notes Advertiser sports editor Curtis Murayama, the added coverage recognizes the broader playing field now available at the high school sports level.

Murayama notes that while some readers may not consider Division II to be varsity, it definitely is for certain schools. For smaller schools, such as St. Francis, La Pietra and St. Andrew's Priory, this is the highest level available for student-athletes to compete.

That is unlike the large schools, such as Punahou and Kamehameha, which have both Division I and Division II sports.

"Division II is beginning to carve its own niche, especially in girls basketball and that's a good thing," said Murayama.

And that is why three weeks ago when two unbeaten girls basketball teams, Punahou and La Pietra, played in a Division II game in a packed gym, sports writer Leila Wai covered the game.

Reach Anne Harpham at aharpham@honoluluadvertiser.com.